There is a new addition to the popular Acer Aspire Netbook family. This is no ordinary netbook – it’s powered by Intel’s new N450 Atom processor. The Acer Aspire One AO532h, energized by Intel’s next-gen N450 Chip, offers better performance and longer battery life than older netbooks. Acer claims the new machine can last up to 8 hours with the standard 6-cell Li-ion (4400 mAh) battery or 10 hours with a high-density 6-cell (5600 mAh) battery.

Thanks, to this new processor, netbooks can be smaller and thinner, not that they’re small enough already. This processor integrates the graphics on to the CPU, so space is freed up. The Aspire One AO532h comes in just under an inch thick and weighs a bit over 2.5 pounds while sporting a 10.1-inch screen, according to Acer’s specs.

Other than that, everything else is pretty standard:

1 GB DDR2 RAM

160 GB Hard Drive

10/100 Ethernet Port

802.11 b/g/Draft-N Wi-Fi

Media Card Reader

Webcam

It also includes a multi-gesture touch pad that allows you to glide, pinch, and “swirl” your fingers to move more easily around the screen. The keyboard is also 93% standard size, so the keyboard is less cramped than on other netbooks.

The netbook comes preinstalled with the Windows Vista of Windows 7, Windows starter, like other netbooks. The starting price for this netbook will be $299, and it’s expected to hit shelves this month. So if you just bought a netbook with worse specs than this, take it back and get this one!

Acer now joins the ranks of several other Netbook makers by unveiling new machines running the N450 Atom. In December, Asus debuted its Eee PC 1005PE. HP’s “unannounced” Mini 210 Netbook then hit the news, followed by models from Toshiba and Gateway. Many of these companies will be showing off their latest N450-powered Netbooks when CES launches in Las Vegas this week.